This time last year, I was approaching Warlords of Draenor with an air of reluctance. I really didn't enjoy Cataclysm especially when it came to the end with the 3.3 Dragon Soul raid. Everything Blizzard was doing with Mists seemed really good on paper.... until I got to actually purchase and play Mists
I quit the game about two days ago to play RIFT. Now, that game is turning free to play and WoW has unsurprisingly lost around 1.7 million subscribers, its biggest hit since ballooning to 12 million at the start of Wrath.
There are a metric ton of things I now hate about WoW and would return to if they were fixed:
1) The lack of nostalgia:
I started playing WoW by late 2005 and TBC was launched by the time I was around level 25. I would never get to experience any of the raids in Vanilla as they were intended, thanks to the balance changes of subsequent expansions and the lack of people remaining at level 60 trivialising game content. I would never get to fight C'thun, Ragnaros or Nefarian.
TBC was my favourite expansion because I still had real life friends playing the game and Outland and the gameplay of each class frankly felt like a blast. Unfortunately the community and my misfortune of sinking all my time into a class that was not only overplayed but could only play in DPS roles ruined my PvE and PvP experiences of the expansion.
By 3.0.3, the only raid I had cleared was Karazhan, and that was after a rarely generous group of raiders decided to pug the raid and invite me when I asked. Needless to say they steamrolled the raid within about an hour. It didn't feel the same.
Coming into Cataclysm, I then felt nostalgic about all the TBC and Wrath content I never got to clear. I yearned for the ability to once again enter Ulduar-10 with a group of (this time) competent raiders and start clearing Hard Mode bosses, take down the four Keepers and finally get to experience first-hand the majesty of General Vezax and Yogg Saron. This time with no guild bureaucracy, backstabbing, bullying or incompetence getting in the way (I will elaborate on this in a later point.)
Meanwhile on the WoW forums any thread pleading for realms of previous expansion content (something existing in EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot) is locked usually without a Blue response, but when they do they give the usual press statement about there being no plans and them wanting to move the game forward.
Meanwhile we see Blizzard lazily rehash content in the form of Naxxramas and Onyxia for Wrath; Zul'Gurub, Deadmines, Shadowfang Keep and Zul'Aman in Cataclysm; and Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance in Mists, repackage it as new, and usually destroy the old versions (especially in the case of old raids, which are now inaccessible in their original format.)
Even one of Mists' much touted features, Challenge Mode, could have been adapted towards old raids to bring them back. Imagine having your item level locked to 70 and your character level locked to 60 as you clear a retuned 10/25 man version of Molten Core! Imagine that for all of WoW's old raids! Why didn't this happen?
Even Trion Worlds did it infinitely better than Blizzard did. While there is no incentive to do old raids, you can level yourself down to do old content and STILL find it challenging.
In Cataclysm we saw a guild called use the cross-realm RealID raiding feature to get 40 man raids of level 50 players to clear old raids like Ahn'Qiraj, Molten Core and Blackwing Lair, and actually clear bosses having an easier time than the 60 players of old did. This is why we can't just "freeze characters at level 60 and keep doing old content" because the slew of often terrible balance changes in the eve of each expansion imbalances old Vanilla content to the point where it is trivialised.
If today's level 50s are more powerful than the level 60s of eight years ago, then something is clearly wrong.
2) The conversion towards World of DailyCraft:
Blizzard has messed up Mists of Pandaria beyond repair. Who at Blizzard honestly thought it was a good idea to advertise faction championing as a feature two expansions prior then outright remove the ability to do so, instead forcing players to grind hundreds of daily quests just to actually spend their hard-earned Justice and Valor points? Better yet, why do we have to grind reputations just to spend PvE points? Why not force this upon PvPers too? Why is it just PvE that gets the shaft?
I don't enjoy PvE. So I PvP, which I like a lot more.
but right now PvP is highly unbalanced.
I could go for days about what's wrong with it but it's not worth it.
Also, no flying. Which I find stupid, for many reasons as well.
I also feel there is a major lack of content. Blizzard treats us like dogs even though we give them our money. We continue to give them another chance each expansion, but they keep failing us.
What I still can't believe is how they release an expansion with a location locked off
Kinds of reminds me of a human without a leg.
And what's worse is almost 5 months later, they release the first patch. And guess what? It's still locked off. The only thing that happened in the patch is the strong classes were buffed, and the weak classes were either nerfed or left alone, and some useless twitter thing that could have instead been more content, or perhaps Tanaan jungle being unlocked.
I am all for giving people who do solo questing and dailies the ability to farm JP and VP - the way this feature was advertised in the unveiling of Mists - but I am not for forcing mandatory daily quests down a PvEer's throat.
3) The supposed dead-ness of the game.
The week before I quit WoW, I queued for a LFR raid. After about two months of on-and-off grinding for the tank gear I required, I finally got the item levels needed to queue and not just from easily purchaseable PvP gear with overinflated item levels.
I queued at around 5PM, which should be a peak-ish time. Thirty minutes later, this was the result of still being in the queue:
Tanks: 1/2
Healers: 0/6
Damage Dealers: 0/17
That's right, I was still the only person to have queued. I felt like the game was dead even during daylight hours. With the lack of meaningful interaction I got from players on my realm, the amount of toxic, abusive morons I got in Dungeon Finder (elaborated on my next point), and whatnot, I decided to just unsubscribe and look for greener MMO pastures.
With this being a harsh reality for myself, I am not surprised that a top-tier PvE guild has called it quits on raiding and that WoW's subscriber count has plummeted. The game is hemorrhaging subscribers and I actually felt like I was playing a £7.99 a month single player game at times.
4) The Community:
Before I mention this entire point, I am going to omit any real player and guild names. Even though many of them no longer play WoW and many of these guilds have disbanded, I still wish to give them the anonymity they deserve in this reflection. Additionally, naming and shaming is a breach of Blizzard forum rules.
The community is one of the biggest reasons why I felt cheated at the end of each expansion. I can give for you a basic summary of the abuse I was subjected to:
Two IRL friends were poached by a guild whose GM blacklisted me from joining, going so far as to refuse to activate my forum account and IP block me from their guild forum. I hardly knew said GM.
A guild kicked me out of reasons I do not understand. They then started a campaign of harassment against me spanning one and a half expansions, telling other guilds to blacklist me (which they did) on lack-of-evidence claims that I ninjaed from their guild bank, spammed their guild chat, purposely ninja pulled bosses in their raids etc. One of their guild members even told me, unprovoked, in trade, to do the realm a favour and kill myself.
I get continually shelved for raids in any guild I joined.
Had numerous items ninjaed from me including a ranged weapon and a 2h axe . The people and reasons why they were ninjaed (i.e. the bow by an officer DPS warrior as a rudimentary stat-stick and the two-hander by the GM as an excuse to not have to teleport and change runes on his BiS weapon) were ridiculous, unfair and due to my lack of authority, uncontestable.
When attempting to create my own guild out of all the grievances in this list, I would often struggle to find members, organise raids, avoid my rosters from being poached, and actually get people to use voice chat, which is pretty much mandatory for any raider.
I got used by a guild master who made me an officer and raid leader for his guild thanks to my dedication and willingness to organise. While I boosted an incompetent B-team through four Naxxramas raids a week (they were so bad that we often wiped continually and gave up), and tried to basically organise his guild, he and his other officers would just go to their alts and raid in other guilds including the ones that had harassed me.
I got continually vote-kicked from instances in Cataclysm and Mists because I would either not be quick and geared enough to catch up with the ninja pulling DPS or end up wiping on a boss due to disobedience of boss tactics.
After most of the realm had blacklisted/burned bridges with me I was forced to reroll Paladin on another realm. I did moderately successful raids on this new realm but faced the same old problems.
Once made a rant about gearscore on the WoW forums in Wrath just to get 8 pages of rude, offensive, hateful, unmoderated responses gear bashing me because I used a +MP5/Int gem instead of a Nightmare Tear in a specific slot.
This is by-no-means a comprehensive list of my experiences during TBC, Wrath and Cata. There are more examples but these are the worst, the ones that ruined my experiences of the game.
5) Player's Fatigue:
After four two-year cycles where my character's progress is effectively nullified and I am forced to grind another five or ten levels to make the game 'begin' again, it feels disillusioning to want to play the game again, especially when you realise you can never experience the old content again.
6) The simplification of talents:
Unpopular opinion incoming. I dislike the new talent changes.. Only giving your players a choice of three talents every fifteen levels, when Elitist Jerks will still try and find a way to theorycraft the best possible talent to pick for each situation, still produce cookie-cutter specs and builds, and still have each raider mindlessly follow said specifications, feels like a huge dumbification of the game.
I liked the complex talent trees of old. Hell, the talent trees of Cataclysm felt like a decent compromise for what would have become a really complex system of 61 point talents had the game progressed further another ten levels.
Yet now the transition of talents felt forced. You were forced to place 31 points in one tree before moving on to another. It felt so artificial. Dual specs, something we saw from PvPers like Nexius in Vanilla, were now out of the question entirely.
ell anyway i have left my subscription running, because 15 dollars a month isnt a lot ot complain about as well as my ventrilo server that i never log on, but leave it on in case I ever want to talk some some people i know irl, but my battle.net status is still showing that i havent logged in in three weeks. (some people may think that's not a lot of time) but whatever... I don't really plan to come back
what I do want to let people realize is from the games that I am enjoying now, and the things that I am doing now that I enjoy... the aspect within them that wow is and has been lacking for a long time for me
is the simple imagination and creativity behind it
we all have been talking about "rehashed" content for a long time, and that's signs that the developers are more worried about cash (short-sightedly) than sitting down and tlaking about how they would like to improve the game and try to make it a game they'd feel is worth playing. That's kind of a statement made trusting that their opinion of what a good game is is the same as the player-base, but for one who enjoyed wrath of the lich king, maybe I can trust their opinion.
nevertheless, there are games that I am playing now solely by myself that I can feel immersed in, and it's really a great stress relief, where I can use my imagination and play how I want, practically.
However, whenever I think of world of warcraft, the one thing that keeps coming to my mind is the stifling raid experiences that i had been having and how limited you are in actually playing now. As I'm typing this, I'm getting the feeling of a lot of confusion from players as to what exactly I mean, because there hasn't been too much of a TOTAL change from that over the years, but whta I mean is... player-wise... there's not a lot of freedom. When I think about wow, I think about raids where I have to pretend to like the people that I'm with, because I have to choose to be with certain groups to get far in the game, and deal with their nasaly voices, bad sense of humor, and attitudes about life in general that I disagree with all the while I'm trying to play the game and get gear.. then there's so much involving that too. It's not a thing for me anymore like it used to be where I was thinking "OH BOY, RAID NIGHT! WHAT TOON AM I GOING TO HOP ON? GOOD THING I HAVE 5 EXTREMELY WELL-GEARED TOONS TO CHOOSE FROM" it's more like... ok there's so much to do now that it's hard for me to find the time to keep two characters maximized, and then when I log on, I have to perform by everyone else's standards, even though I surpass those standards. It's not a thing of "HEY GUILDIES, WHATS UP IS JINXIE LOGGING ON TONIGHT? ALRIGHT COOL WE GOT THE WHOLE GANG. LETS PWN SOME ALLIANCE/HORDE WHILE WE WAIT ON HANDS TO LOG IN" and just have fun with each other the whole time we raid while we down hardmodes and get achievements effortlessly in the game because we've played together for so long and have fun doing it. Now, it's more like... ok I -HAVE- to do this. I WANT to do this irl, but I -HAVE- to sacrifice my irl time to do this and now I'm going to log on to another new guild full of people i dont know, and months later, they still dont care about anything or anybody and nobody has fun.. they just tell you what their demands are and you better meet them for the sake of the guild or raid leader's self esteem about what was accomplished that night, and even if or even though you get far...there's no fun and that totally ruins it for me. It feels so draining. The last night I raided was a night I was in a chatroom on blogtalkradio and hoping and begging that I wouldn't be invited to raid that night because I wanted to chat with pepole I actually had fun being around. On wow, it seems everyone has become so cold that you're an asset now rather than a human being or a player. There's very ltitle to do, and while blizzard scrambles trying to figure out how to please that category of players, the whole imagination and creativity of the world just gets put to the side and it just becomes less and less enjoyable. Progression means nothing if you're not having fun doing it.
In old times, when raiding, if i made a mistake, it was totally forgivable and nobody cared. we all laughed it off and kept going. Now, even though I'm in guilds that still go just as far... everyone freaks out and complains in vent, (and I know that's because they're not having fnu either) but i don't know where else I'm going with this or why I had to make this post that long and not so enjoyable to read (which is the catch-22 in trying to describe my experience here) but let me just say in short, that the game feels so stifling, constricting, controlling, demanding, and you feel like such a "tool" in a raid with one leader telling everyone what to do, rather than a team of people dedicated to having fun, and everyone speaks up at any given time and has fun doing it.
here's an example of some fights I uploaded to my channel in the past where I had fun
(and yes, I recorded them with a potato)
fast forward to the end where you can hear us casually talking in the first video, and then fast forward to the end of the second one where you can hear us celebrating after taking close to 50 attempts to kill garalon. THAT WAS FUN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdO1yC0RfLc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81znac8vmAI
ok now fast forward to the end of this random video where everyone seems bored and that's how warcraft is to me now. It feels like you're a slave to your guild rather than a participant. It's draining and boring now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXCocJ5H9U4
For at least the opening post, I'll keep it nice and constructive and give the best feedback I can.
First, the good! Leveling was the least annoying its been for quite a while (since at least Wrath) to me. I'm not sure I'd say I enjoyed it, but considering how I generally loath leveling content, it was pretty nice this time around.
Dungeons themselves were excellent, IMO. Its just a shame we had absolutely zero motivation to continue to do them.
Raids, too, were excellent in my opinion, and I had a great time participating in them.
Edit: Thought of one more. I personally loved what they did with healing this time around, at least with resto druids. It felt at least mildly challenging, but I also still felt powerful enough that I could help pull my group through bad times and mistakes. And it was fast paced and fun, IMO.
Sadly, those are the only positives I can think of in this expansion... but I've got plenty of negatives. Here... we... go...
Flight. There's little need to repeat the arguments. We all know what the arguments are on both sides. Just know that this almost singlehandedly stopped me from purchasing this expansion to begin with, and had I known Blizzard would backtrack and continue to ban flight in 6.1 (and possibly beyond), I DEFINITELY would have never bought this game. Its that important to me.
Dungeons. Listed as a positive above since they are well done... but in the end... they are utterly and completely pointless. At no point in this game, even in classic, have dungeons been as useless as they currently are. And that's a shame. On top of that, we do have the least amount of dungeons in the entire history of this game, managing to even have less than MoP's low number at launch. Ugh...
Professions... why did you have to gut them? I understand that you didn't want players to jump through several hoops before they could effectively use an item, but did you have to neuter enchanting THAT severely? And that's not to mention what ALL the professions seem to have been reduced to: a daily cooldown to craft random gear. That is quite literally all they are. No challenge, no searching for mats or patterns... just log in... press a few buttons, and you're done. You'll collect your free item ever few days. That's horrible.
Garrisons... oh my... what to say about you. I love the concept on paper and I actually like how they are implemented in game. I actually like doing those stupid little follower missions and leveling them up and everything. I really did enjoy it.
So what is the problem? Garrisons are literally the only thing to do in this game that is remotely worth doing. I quite literally did nothing but log in for a few minutes at a time, 2-3 times a day, click follower missions, and logged out. That was quite literally what the World of Warcraft experience was reduced to: a freemium-style game that I could just as easily play on my phone while sitting on the toilet.
What else should I be doing this expansion? Some will point out world bosses... but I just couldn't care about them (especially since I couldn't fly to them). Others might point out the couple of new reputations present on Draenor... but they are useless to me and provide only vanity toys, pets, or mounts. There is exactly one daily quest to do everyday that has any possible value to me, but the reward is absolutely dreadful and not even remotely close to going through the effort.
Where is the motivation to do a dungeon? Where are the daily quests? Where are the meaningful rep grinds? Where are the items that could be crafted if we went and collected the proper materials earned from actually playing the game? Where are the scenarios? Where are the reasons for me to literally hit up every single zone in the game on a daily basis? Most of all: where is the World of Warcraft that I know and love?
Gone... it doesn't exist anymore. And that is a damn shame.
A final footnote on this initial message that I feel absolutely must be addressed: we paid more than ever for this expansion. It came at the highest price, both in terms of time and money, that we've ever had to deal with. And what did we get for our massive wait and extra hit on our wallets? The least amount of content of all time, by a very large margin. Shame on you, Blizzard. Shame on you.
These kinds of posts are usually met with, "K, bye" and "Don't let the door hit you on the way out" but I've played WoW for so many years I just figured I'd share what I feel to be legitimate reasons as to why I don't think the game is really much fun anymore.
1.) All my friends left. My old raiding guild literally all abandoned ship about a month into Highmaul.
2.) The trapped in the Garrison feeling. A lot of people said it. But having trade chat in the Garrison really took away the feeling of community. I'm like 1 of several thousand people who share this same opinion. I also think Garrisons should be shared account wide, or completely destroyed by Iron Horde.
3.) No repeat kills on Draenor rares. I used to kill rares all the time in MoP. It was a reason to go around and explore the new zones. Killing them once and then them not being rare really took an old fun aspect of the game and threw it right out the window.
4.) No customization of gear. No item upgrades. No gems really. Enchants on a handful of items. Shared gear between dps and tanks and heals. I mean come on. You get a piece of gear and then that's the end of it. You can't enhance it or really make it your own in any meaningful way. Taking away the ability to customize gear to suit how you want to play your character really cheapened the experience for me.
5.) Apexis dailies are all the same, no matter where you "choose" to do them. Not only that, but Apexis crystals aren't worth grinding for. Why spend a month grinding for a piece of gear that is equal to an LFR piece?
6.) No desire to get reputation with new factions. That's the first time I've felt this way since BC. I wanted to get exalted with the Argent Crusade. I aspired to get exalted with the Ebon Blade. I can't even name all of the handful of factions in WoD.
7.) Sense of community gone.
8.) Ashran is a disaster, still. I haven't met anyone in my battlegroup who likes it. They call it trashran. Especially after removing the Conquest Pts from killing the opposing team's boss and forcing everyone into an event fight with each other, creating huge lag spikes and major problems with phasing.
9.) LFR does absolutely nothing to prepare people to raid.
10.) Flying mounts have been replaced with Engineer Wormhole + Aviana's Feather to get anywhere in Draenor quickly. Just let people have flying mounts. I used to do Archaeology. Not anymore. If you can't get from one dig site to another within a reasonable amount of time it's not worth sinking the time in.
11.) There isn't a single cohesive core RBG group on my entire server. Every week I'm doing the group finder and it's a mess and goes swimmingly probably 10-15% of the time. Putting together Skype calls can be a huge pain in the neck, especially when Skype is buggy and dropping calls. Why there isn't an in-game voice option after all these years is beyond me.
12.) Lastly, and this cut deep, is Professions. No profession buffs and no variety of mats for an item has really cheapened the crafting experience. 100 Truesteel Ingots. Ok. That's it? To make this piece of gear? How uncreative is that? Old stuff used to take you all over the map to get this and that to put something together. Now it's just a farmville waiting game. That was hugely disparaging.
Anyway, those were my thoughts. If these problems get resolved I'll be back (not that any of you care about one dude leaving, but I can't be the only one who feels this way about a lot of these issues). But as it sits now the game feels grindy, repetitive, unrewarding, and a little lonely.
The End:
P.S not sure if any of that even makes sense because I just copied and pasted a bunch of random shit to see if anyone would read it. I'm not quitting go fuck yourselves.
